How we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which, in turn, forms our reality.

The Mystic Library is a growing repository of first and second hand accounts of unique personal experiences and practical information to help us expand our understanding of who we are, what reality is, and what the purpose of life is. By understanding our inner experiences as well as our outer experiences, we’ll come closer to a true definition of who we are and what reality is.

Until the rise of Quantum Physics, conventional science said: “if you can’t see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, it doesn’t exist. If one person can’t share or repeat the same experience as another, it’s not ‘real'”. This arbitrary definition of reality doesn’t take into account the fact that even physical objects are subjectively perceived. Even though we can agree that we’re perceiving the same tree or flower, we ignore the fact that each one of us is seeing our own unique version of that tree or flower. In other words, every experience is subjective no matter how much we agree about its size, shape, color and chemical analysis!

By learning how to use and develop our intuitive abilities and inner senses in altered states of consciousness, we can see and explore another side of ourselves, a side that is just as real and valid as its physical counterpart. If mankind, as a whole, is to succeed in climbing the next rung in the ladder of human evolution, we must include all knowledge of who we are and not arbitrarily exclude knowledge of our inner experiences and abilities because they seem too frightening, irrelevant, unreal, distracting, or inconvenient.

It’s impossible to objectively analyze the content of individual, subjective experiences but we can analyze the abilities we use to have such experiences. In other words, we can objectively analyze the types of inner senses and intuitive abilities we use during these experiences.

We all have strange experiences. For example, one day while driving my bus from Guerneville to Santa Rosa, I told a young girl in Gothic dress about seeing the ghost of a man I knew riding a bicycle on the side of the road north of Santa Rosa. I told her that when I saw Ben’s ghost, I didn’t know he had been dead for several months already. He looked completely real to me! She then told me about the highly ritualized out of body experiences (oobes) she and her friends practiced.

When my Gothic friend got off the bus, I looked in the rear view passenger mirror and asked my lone remaining passenger, Romeo, a retired man, if he had ever seen a ghost or had a psychic experience. He said “No!” in a way that dismissed everything not physically based so I shifted my attention onto other thoughts while continuing to drive. After several minutes, Romeo cleared his throat and said, “Wait a minute, I take that back. I think I did have a psychic experience once. It was right after my father died. I was sitting in my darkened living room grieving for him when his face materialized in the corner of the room near the ceiling.”

According to Romeo, his father said, “It’s okay, Romeo, I’m alright. Don’t worry about me.” And then he disappeared. Romeo added, “The experience shocked me but made me feel better.” Afraid that the people he knew would laugh at him, he never shared it with anyone, until now.

How many of us have had “strange” experiences and not told others because we thought they would think we were crazy?

Who are we? What’s Reality? What’s the purpose of life? We need to ask ourselves these questions until we’re completely satisfied with our answers because how we define ourselves and the world around us determines how we treat ourselves and one another. To find honest answers to these fundamental questions, we need to explore the nature of our inner selves and experiences as well as our outer selves and experiences. In doing so, not only will we be redefining who we are and what reality is, we will be mapping the very contours of the soul.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin